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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

You won't be able to wash your clothes when you feel like, you will have to adapt to when there is spare power, like in developing countries.

Firstly, that doesn't sound like a particularly hard thing to accept if it genuinely helps. "I want to use my washing machine whenever I want" sounds like a very poor reason to destroy the environment.

However, regardless of that, this isn't new. There have been time-of-day based electricity tariffs for decades that are aimed at incentivising people to do more demanding things at particular times e.g. when industry isn't using the power. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7

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> "I want to use my washing machine whenever I want" sounds like a very poor reason to destroy the environment.

What the heck? Where is your evidence that using washing machines at inconvenient times is going to destroy the environment?

If your argument is that any use of electricity from fossil fuels is destroying the environment, then nobody should even be charging their phones at night. Time-shifting washing machines isn't going to fix carbon emissions since they're going to be emissions at any time of the day.

I don't know how you guys in Europe managed to gaslight yourselves into justifying regression of social and technological development. A lot of these moral arguments do not make sense. You said it yourself -- industry is incentivized to convince the public to use less electricity during peak hours so they can pay less. It's pretty much a psyop by capitalists. And for some reason you're shilling for them even though presumably you're paid exactly zero buckaroos

I've been receiving tons of free or negative rate energy for the last few years because of time of day pricing and as a result have driven thousands of miles at near zero fuel cost. It's automated for me so all I have to do is plug my car in.

I certainly don't view the windless day where the price is a little higher than average as a cause not to use my washing machine as on average I win out.

I'm not sure it's useful generalising a continent of peoples political opinions but I see renewables, storage and smart grids as really new tools that society previously had no access to, it's a massive carrot not a stick.

> I don't know how you guys in Europe managed to gaslight yourselves into justifying regression of social and technological development

Many of us believe that the alternative is a serious risk of severe climate change that would be much more disruptive. Not being able to use your washing machine at night is going to seem like the smallest of minor inconveniences if crops start failing and we don't have food, or cites end up underwater triggering mass migration into neighbouring areas and that leads to large scale societal conflict.

Of course, if you don't believe that those things will happen then caring about climate change seems irrational. But belief in (anthropogenic) climate change is the mainstream view on all sides of the political spectrum in most of Europe.

How do you explain that basically all European countries tax electricity much higher than fossil gas? Countries like Germany and the UK make the US look good when it comes to heat pump adoption.

More ironically, air conditioning is tolerated if powered by oil (like in cars), but not by electricity (like in buildings). At least Europe is better at EV adoption, but still far behind many parts of Asia.

That's because Germany can't afford the additional grid load from electric heating.

Maybe they should, idk actually invest in renewables at massive scale instead of telling the people of a purportedly rich country that they should have to ration energy like its wartime? Why do people in Europe accept quality of life hits for dumb fake arguments about degrowth when you could literally just build more renewables.

Germany over-invested in renewables and is now reaping what it has sown.

They're going to invest 30 billion euros in direct government _subsidies_ in adding 11GW of natural gas generation.

For comparison, this amount of money would buy 5GW of nuclear power generation. But nuclear power is basically free after the initial capital expenses, and natural gas generation will still require fuel (gas or maybe hydrogen).

Oil in cars is taxed higher than electricity in germany

No, I simply don't believe changing the time I wash my clothes is a solution to the climate problems.

It's crazy that you guys do.

> It's crazy that you guys do.

That's a very weak straw manning of their (admittedly not strongly stated) position.

You'd look better if you had a shot at steel manning where they're coming from rather than adopting such a weak and trivial rebuttal.

I don't know how you guys in Europe managed to gaslight yourselves into justifying regression of social and technological development.

The evidence for man-made climate change is quite compelling, and taking personal responsibility for your own impact on it isn't hard. I don't really see doing my washing at 6am as 'social and technological regression'. Quite the opposite actually - my washing machine has bluetooth and an app. I can tell it when to start.

The fact there isn't global pressure on corporations to be similarly responsible means my act of selflessness is ultimately a futile waste of time, but that's your kids and grandkids problem. I've chosen not to have kids, so I don't really care. I would suggest that choosing to have a family but not choosing to protect the environment as much as you can is an act of incredible selfishness towards your own children. They're the ones who'll have to live in a world with problems like water and food shortages. There is every chance that your grandchildren will die in a war over resources, and your view that tech is awesome will be little comfort to them.

> The evidence for man-made climate change is quite compelling

Sure

Where is the the evidence for me using the washing machine at the wrong time causing climate change?

As I said, I don't mind people claiming that washing clothes itself is bad for the environment (it contributes a little bit), but the idea that it's bad specifically because I wash it at a bad time? That's insane.

"I want to use my washing machine whenever I want" sounds like a very poor reason to destroy the environment."

The environment is going to be destroyed anyway, since the rest of the world will continue to use their washing machine whenever they want. [1]

The current European approach to climate change is completely bonkers and will only make Europeans poorer and miserable.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

It already has made them poorer and miserable. The Draghi report was all about how they were poorer due to these things. Of course they decided not to follow the recommendations.

> since the rest of the world will continue to use their washing machine whenever they want

No they have even less money than Europe. They'll do the smart thing, which is using electricity when it's cheap.

You'd have a point if those countries had followed Europe in replacing coal with imported gas, but few countries outside of Europe have done that. Without imported gas, electricity is generally cheap.

China burns coal and has still had time-of-use pricing since 1999.

The price of electricity is a function of demand with respect to supply. Even if the fuel is cheap, heavy demand will cost more to supply than low demand.

https://www.climatescorecard.org/2019/02/time-of-use-electri...

Europe did not replace coal with gas. The only country that did this worth mentioning is the US.

The UK largely did - there was a "dash for gas" throughout the 1990s, a response to the decline of UK-mined coal and the availability of North Sea gas.

Coal is no longer used, and the remaining mothballed coal power stations were demolished a couple of years ago. North Sea gas is now in decline, and is rapidly being replaced by renewables for electricity generation but we'll still rely on (expensive!) LNG imports to make up the difference until the end of the decade.

Well Germany did. We switched off Europe most modern (at least at the time) coal plant in Hamburg and want to phase out remaining coal and lignite.

Even on sunny days we are pretty much burning gas now for electricity 24/7 (last I looked sometime in September).

It did not. Germany's percentage of gas use for electricity stayed mostly flat. In absolutely numbers it went down because of less electricity use. Energy Charts from Fraunhofer publishes this data [1].

2025 it was 49.5TWh

2010 it was over 66.4TWh

Coal use went down significantly.

[1] https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...

Germany burns just as much gas today as it did when it had nuclear power plants.

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